This morning I watched a man on the subway surreptitiously steal glances at the woman next to him as he sketched her face. He was talented, his lines alternately smooth, light, confident and firm. He wasn't obvious about drawing her, he couldn't have been. Instead he looked up, arcing his vision, and as he brought his eyes back towards his paper he glimpsed her face, her impeccable pink lipstick, eyelashes tangled in bangs. His sketch took up a space the size of a clementine on his page, and he drew quickly, outlining her eyes and her chin. I blinked and she had bangs, cheeks.
I wonder if he knew that she was watching him as he took her portrait, if he noticed that she cooperatively held her face in profile, only moving her head up and down to skip a song on her MP3 player.
When the train stopped at a big station, they both got up, he slid his sketchbook into his backpack, she stared at it a few seconds longer as they both exited the train and went about their days.
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